Savoring life. Writing on experiences. Moments and milestones in equal measure.

Monday, August 22, 2016

The Archetype of Misfits

When I am not
writing, I am reading. I look for personal blogs and take peeks into the souls
of the writers. Believe you me (my high school math teacher was addicted to
this phrase) words reflect souls. You’ll read about Magunga’s visit to the
massage parlour and in the end you’ll be like, “Filthy, filthy man! God help
him!” On another occasion, say waiting in the Cooperative Bank queue at TRM
which is painfully slow, you’ll read about Biko’s view on the askari at the airport queue calling out
numbers;

“Sigisti one, sigisti two, sigisti three…” - a true Kisii.

And you forget about the
stalling queue. You find the world to be a humorous place. Each read is like
stepping out on a different body. And I can tell you some are dark, some
desolate, some plain, some scary but the best are the weird. Why? Because
normal is boring.

I also hate
writing when I am tired because then I write like Njoki Chege –
hardly-a-point-in-sight kinda posts.

You see how after
a few Jameson’s a guy will pee in the fridge and wonder why the toilet has so
much light coming from it? Well, that echoes my push-back with penning down
thoughts with a shifty mind. And memory. It is hard to settle on a single line
of thought. Every thought becomes a blurred story line. Like the blurred line
between a fridge and a toilet to a drunk mind. That’s when I’d rather read what
akina Luseka are writing about fancy
hotels and resorts.

Perhaps I am in
love with reading. I’ve been flirting with her far too long that I forget to write
regularly. That’s why my ardent reader Siloma will once-over into this blog and
find cobwebs dangling over pieces that were authored months ago. I bet he
sneers with disbelief before resorting to come poke me from wherever it is I
got take my mucene after reading (Normally
at Biko’s blog). Sorry Siloma, I have been such a disappointment.

But I always
write. In my dreams, in class, at work, over those nightly rides from town
going home, over coffee dates and pizza dates and pretty much anything else I
do. Oh and those lazy morning showers. Shower writing sessions are actually the
best, second from pooping sessions of course. Under the steamy water, it’s
always calm; just the right amount of calm to get ideas flowing with every
string of water bouncing off my head. I get to write stories of life. Of how I
want to be about something – like author more ‘bangi sio mboga memes’ and maybe plant a tree somewhere in Nkubu in
the spirit of keeping global warming down. I also write about how I am going to
make this Kuyu neighbor who plays loud Taarab music disappear. Like they do in
the movies.

“Mwambiee, awache
kujizuzuaaa….para parara rampa” (You have to play this in your head with a
Taarab swing)

I think if I hear
this line one more time I’ll pass out.

If you’re my Kuyu neighbor – the one who pretends to be from sijui
Migadini by playing loud Taarab please stop. You suck and I PS I have hears your
accent and it definitely whispers I-grew-up-in-Gatundu. Anyone can hear that
ka- whisper in between you Swahili weng.

Point is, I write
much. Only that those pieces remain tucked away in my head. In there, are great
grandfathers of stories, stories that are still children and their grand-kids
all crammed into one corner. Let me loop you in on how it goes down.

I’ll wake up at
5 am on Saturday morning. Sleep deficient but too hungry to keep going. I’ll
take ten minutes to debate whether fixing breakfast at this time is even
humanly possible. Then under the influence of persistent hunger I’ll fix a
bachelor’s deluxe morning meal – eggs and tea. It will take around 15 minutes to
eat – from my bedroom. Then I’ll try to sleep again but because of the sugar rush
I’ll simply be staring into a dark space. Inevitably I will create a story, a kick-ass introduction, a moral somewhere in there and plenty of humor and I
will promise myself to write it down on a word document. “Wapi!” It all ends at
the bed. The bed of untold stories.

That aside, I want
to ask, how are you fitting in the rhymes of life? And I am asking because
lately I have been feeling like we are in a big dancefloor with DJ Life bringing
the house down and that everyone one else practiced the dance moves but me. Why
you ask? Well because all I want is to make ‘bangi sio mboga memes’ when everyone outchea is trying too hard to own a Ferrari and make me own one.
Okay, perhaps I could use a Ferrari 458 Italia, 597 horsepower, 4.5L V8 engine with
a dual-clutch transmission, 14:1 compression ratio, interiors that have an ego
and a Formula 1 inspired suspension system, but I also want to make memes because
my happiness comes from weird places. Places like seeing a goat given birth in
a farm rather than riding a roller-coaster.

Not that I hate
roller-coasters but the on the happiness list there is memes, then running away
from wild animals (I know the thrill), then that ka-feeling I get when using a
cotton earbud (when the earbud hits your soul its orgasmic), then there’s food
(I’m thinking this should go up the list), then the goat birthing on the rough
slopes of Kerio Valley and now maybe roller-coasters.

Reading Donna Tart’s
Goldfinch is more exciting for me than spending a night in crowded places with younglings
smoking their lungs out and wiggling their behinds into the darkness of night. That’s
too tiring for me. I am also a believer in sobriety because I know only broken
people need intoxication to have fun. And these things are the opium of the
masses.

But the good thing
is that I am not the only one, there are others. Other who do wacky and
wild-like things that make them inimitable and different. There’s the hopeless
romantics that still believe in love and the fairy tales starring cupid. I have
a friend that thinks love is a myth just because one guy shredded her delicate
heart into pieces (poor soul!). But then I know more that find their strength
in rhyming heartbeats. Men that listen to rhythms and blues all day and cry (that
I’ve exaggerated) when she won’t text back, and women that will go down on
their knee if that brings him home. I know such people. A tribe that sees your
person first before they get enticed by your dollar.

There’s also the
terminally weird fellas that have no pleasure in well-cut suits and polished
shoes. Men that spend half their lives in the salon plaiting women’s hair – akina Tony Airo. They know all the
shampoos – like by name not the “it was written shampoo on it” vibe that guys
use when shopping for hair shampoo. And they can name hairstyles other than the
infamous matuta. Men that are different.
Then the weird women that wear aprons and climb on poles. Electricity poles. Fixing
your lights as you rest your feet on that Italian coffee table that Naomi
Mutua, a carpenter and plumber, made. And those in chic concodis in mathrees. A while
back I came across one manning those rugged Githurai buses. She had a spooky
hairstyle, a fanny pack, a faded Calvin Klein jean trousers and an attitude
from here to Meru. When she was hanging off the door – both feet in the air – I
could see the disapproving looks from men. Looks screaming,

The outcast school
kids that are constantly reminded they you have to be cool (perhaps buy the
led-lit shoes) to be let in on the circle. Who wears those anyway? It’s like
being a baby all over again on that you’re a baby that has a beard. Only
Octoppizo pulls those off without a fuss. Ok, can we can also include all
people who one led-lit shoes in the weird list? I feel they are different.
Their happiness sure comes from a weirdly baby-ish place. Then there are also those
with manic fixations over little pleasures in life. Like my church gang that find
happiness in lollipops and jawbreakers. There’s those IT guys that make awkward
conversations because their language is better with computers. And those peeps
that believe they are star-crossed because they are jobless and money seems too
elusive to them. Holding on to ideas and refusing to give in even as vultures
circle around awaiting their last shred of hope to fade.

These are the
misfits. The weird ones. But weird changes things. Those crazy fellas that
think they can change the world are the ones that do change the world. So here
is to all the round pegs in square holes, the outrageously ambitious and those attracted
to broken things. To those who curve their own archetypes.